Tigerhawks suffer 23-point loss at Woodword-Granger

C-M's Sydnie Fahrney scrambles on the ground for a loose ball. She scored four points in the loss at Woodward-Granger on Tuesday.

It has been a similar story throughout most of the season for the girls of Colfax-Mingo. They tend to start out even with teams, but when faced with pressure, the team starts to implode with turnovers. Tuesday night was not much different.

Sloppy possessions combined with shaky decision making led to the lady Tigerhawks suffering a 23-point loss to the Hawks of Woodword-Granger. It was a longer road trip than the team is used to, and that may have contributed to their lack of energy on both ends of the floor.

They didn’t move the ball around very well on offense, and on defense, they were often caught flat-footed, which led to open jumpers for the Hawks. The Hawks were able to knock down most of those shots en route to a 57-34 victory at home.

The Hawks came out in a full court press that forced turnover after turnover as they jumped out to a quick 6-0 lead. The Tigerhawks’ offense picked up late in the half, but by then, C-M already trailed by double digits, and their lack of energy on defense made it nearly impossible to mount some kind of rally.

Despite getting the Hawks to commit enough fouls that C-M was in the bonus not even 30 seconds into the second period, the team just simply couldn’t string together enough stops to make it matter.

A small rally pulled the Tigerhawks within nine after back-to-back layups with 3 minutes remaining in the second quarter. They failed to record a point until almost halfway into the third quarter, however. At that point they trailed by 18 and the game was in hand.

C-M coach Brandon Smith lamented his team’s effort after the game.

“From the moment we got off the bus, it seemed like we weren’t mentally into it. We started throwing the ball away,” Smith said. “Those are passes that we don’t make when we’re successful. Throwing passes like that and leading to turnovers from very early on, it’s tough to battle back from that. We’re not the kind of explosive team on offense that can afford to make those kinds of mistakes.”

The leading scorers for the Tigerhawks included just three players. Senior Nicolette Husson contributed 16 points, but fouled out with five minutes remaining in the game. By then, however, the final result was not in doubt. The other two Tigerhawks to hit the score sheet were junior Jade Lewis with 14 points, and senior Sydnie Fahrney rounded out the scoring with four.